The Abdulmutallab interrogation: it’s about the firewall, stupid
From another highly-recommended and comprehensive look at the Abdulmutallab fiasco:
Other than the first interview, the FBI’s focus was on ensuring that any statements obtained from Abdulmutallab could be used at trial. Intelligence gathering was, if thought of at all, considered a sideshow. It is deeply unsettling, but not at all surprising, that the FBI did not consult with counterterrorism experts in other agencies. The FBI was not about to invite other agencies onto its turf.
This is highly reminiscent of the much-criticized firewall that made it difficult for us to connect the dots before 9/11.
The FBI is part of the Justice Department, which comes under the aegis of Attorney General Eric Holder. In his execrable Congressional testimony (and please read the whole thing, if you’ve got the stomach for it), he has already made it clear that the focus of apprehending terrorists on our soil would be their conviction, rather than intelligence-gathering. He even had this to say when given a hypothetical about whether we’d read Osama bin Laden his Miranda rights, if we were so fortunate as to ever capture him:
Attorney General Holder: …The conviction of Osama bin Laden, were he to come into our custody would not depend on any custodial statements he would make. The case against him, both those of those cases that have already been indicted, the case that we would make against him in the 9/11 cases, would not be dependent on custodial interrogations, so I think that in some ways, you’ve thrown up something, with all due respect, is a red herring.
Sen. Graham: With all due respect, every military lawyer that I’ve talked to is deeply concerned that if we go down this road, we’re criminalizing the war and we’re putting our intelligence-gathering at risk, and I will have statements to back up what I’m saying.
So the treatment of Abdulmutallab should come as no surprise. It is in league with the entire thrust of nearly every relevant act and utterance of both the president and his appointee as head of Justice, Eric Holder.
[NOTE: For background on the firewall—how and why it came to be, and the manner in which it functioned—please see this extraordinarily insightful article on the subject by Andrew McCarthy, the prosecutor of the 1993 WTC bombers.]
Two things that are really dumb about this are that its not like any more evidence is needed from an interrogation to convict Abdulmutallab (there were one or two eye-witnesses) and who cares if he gets convicted (as the main priority) anyway? He was after all, just the stooge.
Given the circumstances of Abdulmutallab’s capture, there is overwhelming evidence to convict him on a variety of charges without him saying a word. Therefore nothing he may have confessed was necessary for a conviction, and there was no need to be so strict in observing the legal niceties for admissible evidence from the interrogation.
The second point might be a bit harder politically, but it also true: who really cares about Abdulmutallab. He was just the dopey cannon fodder. He could hardly have done it alone, notwithstanding President Obama’s insightful analysis. It’s the people behind him that are the real threat, and that should be the priority. The US Government priority should have been to take Abdulmutallab and get all the intelligence information they could from him (in return for a light sentence if need be). Lets face it, for his own protection he’d need to be incarcerated anyway as I’m sure the good ole brotherhood would need to make an example of a squealer.
Watching from my vantage on the other side of the world, I have to say this administration is looking crazier as time goes on. The disconnect with the mainstream press however is quite extraordinary, although I think starting to end. The Obama Team needs to be increasingly savvy in their image handling, but stuff-up’s like Abdulmutallab highlight they are still living in the “we own the press” glory days.
Of course the Abdulmutallab dust up is just a minor skirmish compared to the coming New York terrorist trials. Its hard to see Eric Holder keeping his job too much longer.
It is plain to see that both Attorney General Holder and his boss are dangerous nincompoops. There is obviously nothing to be gained by adhering to this course of action. The question becomes how can they be removed from office for endangering our citizens through their gross negligence?
Holder and Obama risk the safety of the nation to make political points. Sooner or later one of these attempts will succeed and then there will be the devil to pay.
Attaboy, Barry, keep dancin’ in the minefield.
Where Mitch Rapp when you need him?
As for the FBI, don’t agents still consider themselves American citizens? Have they no concerns beyond Mirandizing properly? Just following orders, huh?
A pox on all their houses; but if it please Allah, start with Baraq and Eric.
As I mentioned the other day, Holder was at Michelle’s little birthday outing along with Valerie Jarrett. He could be a close family friend who will be defended to the last by Obama.
It is hard to believe how dense this crew is. Do you hink they even understand what Andy McCarthy is talking abot?
“As for the FBI, don’t agents still consider themselves American citizens?”
Yes they do, but even more importantly they consider themselves American citizens who are not in court facing hate crimes charges.
The local New York news had a WHOLE BUNCH of VERY ANGRY Chinatown and downtown business owners testifying at a local community board meeting about the insane clown posse’s plan to try KSM in our downtown courts. They are furious that the Feds (aka Obummer et al.) are forcing New York City to host this trial, with the madness of ultra-security, military lockdown, etc., etc.
They feel we’ve been through enough with the attacks themselves, and the ruinous aftermath — now the Zero wants to force this on us as well? I’m mad enough to chew nails and spit tacks.
And Nanny Bloomberg just gave a mealy-mouthed speech wherein he said he thought it would be “okay” to have the [Blame Bush] trial here. Just last week he was griping about the cost: some $400 million.
I wish to God we had a functioning Fourth Estate, instead of the toadies and lackeys and lickspittles we’re cursed with. If any of these egregiously terrible acts were Properly Reported, people would be in Washington brandishing real pitchforks.
It’s so hard for me to believe what I’m seeing, the discounting of a legit and ongoing threat to the US by the President and his administration. I was outraged that it took three days to get this camera hog to come out and say something, anything about the Christmas attempt.
The continued persistence of trying the KSM trial in downtown Manhattan, the hush-hush surrounding the Ft. Hood jihadi, and all the rest. I cannot help but feeling that this is a deliberate f*ck you to the American people. That he believes that these people are justified in their attempts to kill Americans at home and abroad. It gives creedence to what his critics say/said about him sitting all those years in Wright’s church and listening to the “goddamn America” rants.
There MUST be a firestorm of controversy, poor morale and disgust within the ranks of the National Security networks, FBI, CIA etc. at what is transpiring these days from the White House.
I hope what happened in Massachusetts is a trend, our safety depends on it
These are people who believe that on balance, the good will we engender in the world by treating our enemies with consummate mercy and forebearance outweighs whatever practical gain we might get from the intelligence.
This is only true in their imagination, with John Lennon playing solo piano in the background. They live in a movie and act out roles that involve lots of close-ups of them looking thoughtful, and poignant moments. The good guys win in the end, as Holder and Obama stand firm and ignore the base temptations that other, less visionary politicians would succumb to. There’s a boffo finish to the movie, too, with people from many cultures dancing and embracing while stirring music plays in the background and Obama looks on benignly.
Welcome to the madhouse.
I like Lindsey Graham’s idea of Congress refusing to fund the trials in Manhattan. That will take some major cojones.
The ‘Lady Al Qaeda’ trial in New York–no Jewish jurors!–is just a presage of the fun to come when KSM is tried. These people obviously belong in a military court and Obama’s insistence upon giving Jihadis civil rights and holding show trials for political revenge is just an indication of how fundamentally evil he and his cohorts are.
Evil.
the whole firewall argument is BS
its point is to sell us on a singular total force with few limits on its ability to affect people.
kind of like another model they are copying.
a free state has to accept the limits of what a free state costs… period.
sitting around and grousing that the system would be better totalitarian is a false assumption. and is asked by not asking and dancing around it.
remember the principal of explosion
The principle of explosion is the law of classical logic and a few other systems (e.g., intuitionistic logic) according to which “anything follows from a contradiction”; that is, once a contradiction has been asserted, any proposition (or its converse) can be inferred from it. In symbolic terms, the principle of explosion can be expressed in the following way (where “” symbolizes the relation of logical consequence):
This can be read as, “If one claims something is both true () and not true (), one can logically derive any conclusion (ψ).”
The principle of explosion is also known as ex falso quodlibet, ex falso sequitur quodlibet (EFSQ for short), ex contradictione (sequitur) quodlibet (ECQ for short), and ex falso/contradictione (sequitur) (Latin: “from falsehood/contradiction (follows) anything”, literally “… what pleases”).
hit return too fast.
marxism, cultural marxism, feminism, and all those ideological things depend on this form.
if you have feminists that are against pornography
and you have feminists for pornography
then feminism can literally prove anything.
[feminism is a form of cultural marxism, and so has the inherited qualities from the parent]
An informal statement of the argument for explosion is this. Consider two inconsistent statements, “Lemons are yellow” (feminists are against pornography) and “It is not the case that lemons are yellow” (feminists are for pornography). and suppose for the sake of argument that both are true.
exactly the same… logical form
BOTH ARE TRUE (so we dont have to suppose)
We can then prove anything, for instance that Santa Claus exists: Since the statement that “Lemons are yellow and it is not the case that they are yellow” is true, we can infer that lemons are yellow. And from this we can infer that the statement “Either lemons are yellow or Santa Claus exists” is true (one or the other has to be true for this statement to be true, and we just showed that it is true that lemons are yellow, so this expanded statement is true). And since either lemons are yellow or Santa Claus exists, and since it is not the case that lemons are yellow (this was our first premise), it must be true that Santa Claus exists.
in this way feminists, marxists, socialists, progressives, et al. seem before the fact to have the answers..
sheesh. 🙂
Let me start by saying I agree these folks should be tried by military tribunals. Let me follow by saying: it gets difficult. The Bush administration attempted to try a US Citizen as an enemy combatant. That seems problematic. OK, so SCOTUS strikes down that attempt with no majority opinion (too lazy to cite). So we agree noncitizens can be tried in military tribunals. When? The foreign student on a US student visa? Certainly not for shoplifting. Only for an “act of war” then? OK, what is an act of war? Attempted violence on a mass scale? More than 1 person potentially harmed? Just one? A French visitor stabs two people in the course of an argument about “Freedom fries.” Do we just do this on a per country agreement basis? We certainly expect, when visiting another country, we will get a fair trial should we commmit some bad act. People from Britain get a trial? Yemenis do not? What about British Yemenis? (Or other British muslims- a growing problem). Is it only a matter of utility? Military tribunal when we need intelligence; trial if not?
Do we, like pornography, just know the difference when we see it?
We need to sort out these questions.
holmes,
I agree that there are muddy areas, but with much of the world intimidated by theHRW/Amnesty/ACLU line, we can’t reach a consensus that is internationally acceptable. Our allies are too afraid of taking a hit at the ballot box and their MSMs are disgusting for the most part. They certainly haven’t taken note that there is now a military tribunal procedure that has gone through all three branches of government. We will still be criticized, and when our leaders give too much weight to the opinions of the world, we put ourselves in danger. We simply have too many people who are not honestly seeking for a decent answer to a hard problem but rather want to win political points and foreign laurels.
You think Obie would know the Presidential oath.
He did it twice.